Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  “The decision came only after much prayer and study, I can tell you that. For years I agonized.” He paused to gather his thoughts, trying to recall whether his motives through all those years had been pure.

  “And did the agony,” Gerard asked, “redeem the act?”

  “No, I suppose not. Or I would not be here.”

  “There you have it. Suffering never redeems a wrong. The question is whether, in the end, you allow the suffering to lead you to decide aright.”

  “Then are we damned for a wrong choice, even when the way is not clear because it is thick with rights and wrongs on both sides?”

  “Come. You know better than that. Wrong choices can be redeemed, but by Christ alone, not by mere suffering. If our agonies bring us to Christ, they have done their office. But go on: tell me how you came to leave the Holy Church.”

  “First, I watched my brother Henry, cast into Newgate Prison only a few days before, die of the Black Death infesting that hellish place. His crime was but giving shelter to a Catholic priest.”

  “Which?”

  “Father William Harrington.”

  “Ah, yes, young Harrington. I knew him. He died well, a glorious martyr’s death.”

  “Glorious!” Jack raised his voice despite his resolve to stay calm. “That is the kind of talk that cost my brother his life, and you your own, almost. From the cradle on, our uncles, Henry’s and mine—Jasper in his tales, Ellis in his letters, Jesuits both, these uncles—filled our hearts with longing for this heaven-hellish gift of martyrdom.”

  “Gift of martyrdom? The gift is steadfast perseverance in the faith,” the priest said quietly. “I do not long for martyrdom. If it comes I am ready. But I knew your uncles. In your youth, it may hap, you misconstrued their tales and their letters. In any case I know your uncles did not cause your brother’s death. Or Father Harrington’s. It was the English apostates—the Protestants and atheists—who did so.”

  “Harrington: you say you knew him, but were you with him at the end?”

  The priest said, “No, more’s the pity. My superior forbade me to witness the holy martyrdom, lest I be recognized and captured.”

  “Well, I watched him die. When Topcliffe cut him down, before that madman showed the priest his own guts and burned them in his very sight, Harrington wrestled with him.”

  “Yes. I have heard as much. A noble struggle, were it not?”

  Jack’s gestures grew expansive. “Father, the man was terrified. He wanted to live, not die a martyr’s death. You could see it in the way he fought. And what of you? You wanted to live when you escaped from Topcliffe and the Tower.”

  “Of course I did. As long as God wishes me to minister to his flock, I wish to live. When God calls me home, I wish to die. And it is true a martyr’s death is best. Your uncles did well to teach that much to you from your cradle, though you seem to have forgotten the lesson. Thanks be to God I have not forgotten it.” The priest had begun speaking sharply, almost like a schoolmaster chiding a pupil. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath—as if to ward off infection from whatever agitations this strangely argumentative pilgrim, this half-penitent apostate, had brought into the room with him. The priest’s voice was calm when he continued. “Yet martyrdom is not mine to seek out. When Harrington wrestled with the hangman—when I escaped from the Tower—we were but discerning God’s will for us. He willed Harrington to die then, me to live now. I know not why. Our part is but to discern God’s will and do it.”

  Now Father Gerard sat patiently, an easy smile on his face, looking like some mildly pleased nobleman watching his beloved child at play. He waited, so Jack pressed him: “Do you not see it, Father? You Jesuits, with your fourth vow: you invite the Pope to rob you of your birthright. You vow to let a Roman bishop steal from you the gift of reason. Is that not madness? What if the Pope is wrong? Many have been; any man of reason can see it. A child can see it.”

  Gerard said, “The Pope is like a holy alchemist who distills the wisdom of the ages into one substance, simple and pure. Why do you trust your powers of reason, or why should I trust mine, above the rarefied wisdom of fifteen hundred years and more?”

  Jack would not give up this easily. “Ignatius—the founder of your own Jesuitical order—says if you see a thing as white, and the hierarchic Church sees it as black, then it is black. How can you live with such a saying?”

  Gerard furrowed his brow. “Are you here to confess your sins, or to talk me into renouncing my faith? If the latter, you had as well persuade the wind cease to blow.”

  Jack looked at the priest, tried to calm himself, and bowed his head. “I have come to confess my sins and receive absolution.”

  Burr watched the steam rise off his boots, tipped back his chair, closed his eyes, and let his head rest against the wall. Months lay before him—years it might be, Lady Bedford had said—satisfying the whims of this Walter Chute. Lady Bedford had proven a demanding enough mistress, but at least she commanded a fine wit. Burr let a little moan escape. Chute seemed not to notice; he was sawing the air with his mug as he tunelessly mumbled a catch about Kate Greengown and her bawd. Well, at least there was Donne for company, worthy of trust or no.

  When the song had ended, Chute drained off the rest of his drink, wiped his sleeve across his lips, and shoved the empty piggin into Burr’s ribs. The old servant squinted an eye. Chute leaned forward and said, “What ho, Burr! Another dose of ale, shall we?” Chute could have done it well enough himself from where he sat, but Burr dutifully rose and dipped the beer from the firkin. He wondered what business might concern Eliza Vaux, Jack Donne, and the Wizard Earl.

  Guessing the kitchen must be the only warm spot in the house, Burr glanced about the room. Once before, back when he served the Earl of Southampton, Burr had visited this house to deliver a sealed message from Southampton: a dozen years ago, it must be. Back then Harrowden Hall had been magnificent. A dozen fires blazed at once in various rooms. Sir George Vaux held court like one of the nobles of old.

  At the time he brought the message, this Lady Eliza, now the Dowager of Harrowden, had been in Warwickshire visiting her sister. And now, just as the Dowager’s gardens grew rank with weeds, even the kitchen showed signs of neglect. Cobwebs hung between some of the beams, and the floor could use a good sweeping. The Dowager was right: the place certainly had fallen off. Well, the cause was not hard to guess: the Scotsman king had laid crippling taxes on these Catholic houses since coming to the throne. Probably the Dowager paid the fines too for keeping recusant from the Church of England services. No doubt she had harbored priests here. Some of these Catholic strongholds of the North were riddled with priest-holes, cunningly crafted hiding places the pursuivants could not find when they came to ransack the place. Probably Harrowden was such a house. Conceivably a priest lay hidden somewhere near even now.

  As if picking up on Burr’s thoughts, Chute looked around the room, spread his arms, and said expansively, “Is this not well? Is it not well that we three Catholics travel together, as on a holy pilgrimage?”

  Burr glared at his master and said in a harsh whisper, “Speak within-door, my lord. Even here.”

  His eyes wide, Chute said, “Oho!” and put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. . . .”

  Just then Eliza Vaux appeared in the doorway. If she had overheard the exchange, she didn’t show it. The Dowager took a chair and said, “So. Your friend Donne tells me you are bound for the Netherlands.”

  “He does?” Chute said, looking confused. Then he caught himself and said, “Ah, yes, the Netherlands first. I remember me: Jack wants to visit the Low Countries on our way to Rome. It’s Italy, for my blood. My Italian is excellent. I excelled in Italian at Oxford. Do you speak Italian, Tim?”

  “Little enough, sir.”

  Chute yawned. “No matter. You may rely upon my Italian,” he murmured, his eyes half closed, “when we visit Italy.”

  Burr said to Lady Vaux, “Sir Walter and I, as must be evident to Your Ladyship,
have made free with your beer. Do you not find that some contain it better than others?”

  The Dowager smiled. “Of a surety, I have found it so.” She turned to Chute. “Sir, would you have somewhat to eat with your beer?” But Chute’s head, heavy with drunken sleep, had already fallen to his chest.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was odd, this request to meet at Windsor Castle. What could the woman want? Lady Bedford considered the possibilities. Most likely this Anne Donne had come with a plea for patronage on her husband’s behalf. Or maybe jealousy drove her to ask just the opposite: the end of relations between Jack Donne and Lady Lucy Harrington Russell. Or Anne suspected Lady Bedford’s hand in Jack’s work for Robert Cecil. Or she knew England’s Queen Anna was staying at the castle, and she wanted to use Lady Bedford to pass along some plea to the Queen. Or she simply missed courtly life since her disgraceful elopement. Well, it should be easy enough to find the answer; the girl was no doubt a simple, impetuous creature.

  But the young woman the porter admitted was clear-eyed and clever-looking, a woman perhaps not beautiful but very pretty, one who seemed to bear a wry sense of her own limits as well as those of others. With a noncommittal half-smile Anne took Lady Bedford’s delicately extended hand. She kept her curtsey shallow and unhurried.

  Lady Bedford said, “How good to see you. How fares life at Loseley? Does your father still lord it in high style?”

  “Too high for my liking,” Anne said. “But I have not visited in these three or four years. Relations with my father have been strained for some time.”

  “Ah, there you must be careful. I just last night, at this very palace, heard a new play by the man Shakespeare. It is all about ungrateful daughters, and I have to tell you: it does not end well for them.”

  “Oh, King Lear!” Anne exclaimed. “Jack and I heard it at the Globe not a fortnight since. It is . . . devastating. I wept for hours afterward.”

  “And your husband? Did he weep?”

  “A little, I think.” Anne added a bit ruefully, “But he saw me home and then went to the Mermaid to drink with the author. It was almost dawn when he came home, drunk and full of the raucous life of the alehouse. He wanted to bandy words with me, as he had done with the Shakespeare, Jonson, and the others.”

  Lady Bedford chuckled. “Yes. That sounds like Jack.”

  “But does it? He has a family, and almost always he does right by us.”

  “Ah, but all of London knows that in his youth he bandied more than words. Your husband’s witty poems bodying forth his exploits have been copied out from hand to hand to hand, so that everyone in London who can read has collected two or three of them.”

  “Oh,” Anne said, “I don’t think it’s as bad as that.”

  “Bad! Why should you think it bad? You have married the most notorious seducer of women in all of London. Married him. So that he behaves as he should.” Lady Bedford laid a finger on her cheek as if she were deep in thought. “Yet I wonder. Does he not chafe against the constraints of the marriage bed?”

  “I pray he does not.”

  “Then all is well. You have tamed the wildest man in the city.”

  Anne shifted in her chair. “Tamed? No, I would not call Jack tamed. But he is faithful.”

  “And so you trust him to go to the public playhouses.”

  “And when the fare suits, I go with him.”

  “But you must come to hear plays at Court! The King’s Men—Burbage, Armin, Shakespeare, the whole lot—play for us often.”

  Anne said, “We have not been. . . . But that sounds well. I have not heard a play at Court since my marriage.”

  “Then that must be remedied. Ah! I shall have the man Jonson pen a masque, and he shall include a part for you.” Lady Bedford took both Anne’s hands in hers. “But you are blushing! Don’t tell me a girl so sprightly is shy of playing in a masque.”

  Anne hesitated a moment, then said, “A rumor bruited about has it that you played a part in a masque bare-breasted.”

  “Yes?”

  “It is not true, is it?”

  “Oh, quite true. Why should it not be? I played the part of Venus. Is the Goddess of Love to go about in a bodice and farthingale?”

  “But you are married. And a Christian of the reformed Church of England.”

  Lady Bedford laughed. “But of course I am. What has that to do with my breasts? God made them, and they are shapely. I bared them to his glory.”

  Anne asked, “For my part in the masque, would I be . . . ?”

  “Wrapped in muslin head to foot, if you like. Perhaps Jonson could write you the part of an Egyptian mummy.”

  Anne smiled. “Or maybe something between the mummy and Venus.”

  “Done.”

  Now that Lady Bedford had drawn the first measure of this Anne Donne, it was time to put her to the test. As she led her to a small parlor, Lady Bedford said, “Your husband has told me all about you.”

  A glint of eagerness flashed in Anne’s eyes. “Has he?”

  “Well,” Lady Bedford replied as she motioned for Anne to sit, “perhaps not so much as you might hope, but it seemed the right thing to tell you.”

  “Oh. I see. I suppose there is not much for him to say.”

  “Not much to say? How do you mean? An heir to Loseley Park, cherished daughter of no less a personage than Sir George More and favorite niece of the Lord Keeper himself, a girl with every prospect of a match with a wealthy country squire—perhaps even a baron or a viscount, if things were managed properly—a child who chooses to cast away all to marry a scrivening apostate Catholic for love? Oh, I should think there would be a very great deal to say.”

  “Yes,” said Anne, meeting Lady Bedford’s dark eyes, “I married for love. After all, the realm holds many a woman who marries for wealth, many a woman who would go so far as to marry a fool, had he a title and gold enough. One need not look far at all to find such women. They are . . . common.”

  So Jack Donne’s wife had some fight in her. “You are right,” said Lady Bedford. Some have been born to such stations as to find themselves obliged by the Crown to marry fools.” She looked at Anne carefully for a few moments before adding, “If you numbered me among these women I would perhaps not gainsay your claim. Indeed some of us, but that we were good Christian women, would look beyond our marriages for worthy lovers.”

  Anne said quietly, “Then thanks be to heaven for good Christian women.”

  “Yes. Thanks be.” Lady Bedford smoothed her skirt. “But I see you are great with child. How many will this make?”

  Anne brightened a little. “Three.”

  “Three! And for one so young! I fear you put yourself at risk in going about London on visits such as this when you are so very near your groaning.”

  “Not so near,” said Anne. “Some two months off, I think. Maybe more.”

  “Well, you swell so fulsome already that no doubt the child will be hearty and stout.”

  “If God wills it.”

  “If God wills it.” Lady Bedford glanced at the door as she found herself saying, “So far, God has not willed it for me.”

  “No? But you too are yet young, only a year or two, I think, older than I. In good time, I trust, children will grace your home.”

  The girl seemed earnest. Lady Bedford said, “True, I am but twenty-three. But I have been married these ten years.”

  “And no . . . ?”

  “Oh, I have been pregnant.”

  “How many . . . ?”

  “Three, the same as you.” The tears began to gather in Lady Bedford’s eyes. This would not do. This would not do at all. Despite her effort to maintain control, she found herself saying, “One of them was quickened in the womb as long as yours there.” Her clear, authoritative voice became very quiet. “It— he—was alive. I could feel him move within me. Then. . . .”

  Anne reached out a consoling hand, but Lady Bedford turned away and dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a lace kerchief as she s
aid, “It may be just as well. I have grown accustomed to a life of influence at Court. Children would perhaps prove as much burden as blessing.”

  Anne started to protest but checked herself, saying only, “Perhaps.”

  Suddenly the very picture of composure, Lady Bedford looked squarely at Anne and said, “So: what news from your fine husband? I have not seen him this long while, and he owes me a poem.”

  “It is about him that I have come.”

  Lady Bedford arched an eyebrow. “No doubt.”

  “Do you not know what employment has befallen him?”

  “Why, no. I thought perhaps you had come to solicit my aid in procuring him some office, perhaps that you were come to try my influence at Court. If not that, tell me what is on your mind.”

  Anne looked anything but one well-born lady calling on another: some cold, pregnant child, rather, as she hunched forward a little and clutched her arms with her hands. A large clock stood against the wall behind Lady Bedford, ticking away. Anne said, “Jack has been sent away by Robert Cecil.”

  Lady Bedford did not allow her expression to change. “Sent away, you say.”

  “Yes. I dare not tell you more.”

  “I think there is no need to say another word. Doubtless I can guess near enough. Robert Cecil, like all men—nearly all men, anyway—is a simple creature. He desires only power. All his doings serve merely to augment the power of the Crown, which is to say, to augment power for himself as he directs the Crown. Such a man is strong but hardly in a way I find appealing. Such a man is incapable of . . . complexity; incapable of love, for instance.”

  Anne looked briefly at the floor in front of her. Lady Bedford noted the glance as well as the faint flush rising along Anne’s throat. After considering what these signs might mean, she said, “So, you wish me to intercede with Lord Cecil.”

  “No!” said Anne with surprising force. “I wish. . . . I think there would be nothing to gain in mentioning my name to him.”

  A brief spark of compassion or curiosity flickered across Lady Bedford’s eyes. Then she shrugged. “I suppose it is just as well. Lord Cecil and I are presently not on the best of terms.” There was no need to tell the girl more.